Brian’s Old School Custom Set – Blue

Way back in in the fall of 2004, which would be roughly between the end of the first Mirrodin block and the beginning of Kamigawa block and WELL before the formation of The Mana Pool (that was 2007), Brian decided he wanted to try his hand at set design. So that’s just what he did, creating a set of 150 cards. Other than a bit of templating work and updating to include new terminology and keywords, these cards exist exactly as Brian originally created them. It’s an interesting look back at the way sets were designed back then, as well as the way Brian took the old design philosophies in his own direction. Be sure to go check out the White cards too. We hope you enjoy this trip back as much as we do!

Today we’ve got blue. Whereas white had a very strong central theme in high toughness and defense, the cards in blue are not nearly as in sync. There’s a few bounce spells, some card draw, some flying creatures, and some counterspells. The Aether cycle of cards are based around bounce. Otherwise, you’ve got to look to individual cards to get a sense of what was going on. Stubborn Voidmage is pretty silly, but gets worse if combined with things like white’s Armor Rack. Logical Persuasion can be sacrificed at instant speed, which can create some interesting interactions. Baby Whale became a card (Grayscaled Gharial) in Ravnica, but Forced Denial had to wait another year before becoming Cancel in Time Spiral! As always, please leave your thoughts and comments below. Enjoy!

Mike – In a set with tribal or color matters themes, this would make more sense. This is an interesting example of a card being weaker more for what all the other cards say than for what its own text does.

Use of Intellect
UU
Instant
Draw a card.
At the beginning of your end step, if Use of Intellect is in your graveyard, you may return it to your hand.

Chewie – Interesting that this ability is on a big-ass flyer. At the time this was designed, only Flood could tap non-flyers, and since then only two2/3 ground pounders have been able to do so.

Stolen Information
2UU
Instant
If target creature you control attacks and is not blocked, it deals no damage this turn and you draw cards equal to that creature’s power.

Mike – The primary reason Brian uses the “it deals no combat damage and [do stuff]” is because that was the precedent for “saboteur” creatures up to this point. I’m so glad the design philosophy for these cards moved to “you get both”.

Chewie – Yeah really. As Ophidian gave way to Thieving Magpie and the like, so this would have given way to Hunter’s Insight. And that was JUST printed in Magic 2012! Looks like Brian was way ahead of the curve here. And I think this would have been in my Unblockable deck back in the day.

HI! this is more of a question than a comment. so how did brian divide the number of cards to the number of card types? for example, how many card slots should be dedicated to enchantments, enchantment auras, lands, creatures, sorceries, instants, artifacts…etc?

Logical Persuasion seems pretty awesome, too. I mean, I’d sure as hell think more than twice about playing any creature if I looked across the board and found an effect like that staring back at me.
In fact I’d think twelve times 0_o. or until I found some enchantment removal, whichever comes first.